Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times
George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil
It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo
There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub
You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann
Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog
University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog
[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal
Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education
[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University
Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University
The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog
Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages
Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway
From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law
University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association
The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog
I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes
As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls
Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical
University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life
[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada
If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte
October 16th, 2013 at 10:49AM
Actually, the budgets of almost zero universities rest on the recruitment and use of young men as football players. That’s the insanity of this topic. College football in the parasitical virus in the flea on the tail of the dog. In most cases, it’s sucking resources away from the academic side, not providing any sort of foundation on which the rest of the university relies. Even at big football schools, football revenue typically represents less than 5 percent of overall university revenue, and has been shown to have little relationship to donations, admissions, and other commonly claimed benefits. Yet, too many people–administrators, faculty, students, alumni, politicians and more–let it wag the dog more furiously every day.
October 16th, 2013 at 11:59AM
GTWMA: I had in mind schools with enormous investments in new arenas, carrying multiple very expensive buyout obligations from fired coaches, seriously dependent on ticket sales and student fees that go to sports — that sort of thing. Of course most big sports schools hemorrhage money rather than make anything from sports, and those who do make money put it right back into sports, etc., etc. But my real point was how deeply in hock sports schools are, and how they depend on their recruits to generate the excitement that at least allows them to pay down their sports-related debts.
October 16th, 2013 at 3:38PM
Margaret,
I also didn’t like that last line. I think you should have said the budgets of many *athletic departments* rest on the recruitment and use of young men as football players (as well as the personal budgets of their coaches).
October 17th, 2013 at 8:35AM
I agree with Pete. It’s the bottom half of the D-I schools/conferences that face the greatest risk. I definitely think there are some subsidizing athletics to such a great extent that they are risking the university credit rating, but the greater risks are to the athletic departments at those places.